Rescue 117

PHOTO: Stroller and strollee before elevator incident.

It began harmlessly enough. We'd finished an excellent buffet
breakfast in the restaurant of the Hotel Hauser, a modern three-star establishment in the
heart of St. Moritz. We loaded our six-month-old son into his brand-new Swiss stroller,
the one we'd bought after his previous lightweight stroller had lost a wheel on a
snow-covered path the day before. Next, we stepped into the Hauser's small elevator,
closed the door behind us, and positioned the stroller so that it faced the elevator door.

My husband pressed the button for our floor. CLUNK! A metal lip at the front of the
elevator retracted unexpectedly, leaving a gap of several inches between the lift and the
closed door. As the elevator rose in its shaft, the stroller tried to stay behind--with
our infant son trapped inside.

One of us hit the red emergency button, and the elevator stopped with the stroller's
wheels jammed beneath its front edge. The door bulged outward like a tin can filled with
crème de botulism soup. While I grabbed our baby from his stroller, my husband pressed
the alarm button.

A bell echoed throughout the restaurant. Footsteps approached, and a voice called to to
us in German. Somebody--the manager, perhaps--ascertained that we were alive and hadn't
lost any limbs. Switching to English, he told us the good news: that he was telephoning
the Otis Elevator Company's nearest Swiss representative in Chur. We were left to figure out the bad
news for ourselves: Chur was a good two hours from St. Moritz, making an imminent rescue
by the Otis SWAT team unlikely.

Not to worry. The hotel's engineer arrived on the scene with his toolbox, and we were
told that he'd try to open the door's safety lock or remove the door from its hinges.
These efforts proved futile, alas; the Otis engineers had designed their elevator with a
burglarproof door.

My husband, in the meantime, was afraid the hotel's engineering staff might destroy a
perfectly serviceable elevator door in their eagerness to rescue us. He suggested opening
the door on the floor above, making it possible for us to escape by crawling out the top
of the elevator. Nobody was listening--either that, or the engineer couldn't hear us amid
the the hammering and conversation outside the lift.

Suddenly the hubbub in the lobby became louder. A crowbar's tip protruded into the
elevator, there was a huge crunching noise, the narrow frosted-glass panel in the panel
cracked, and the door flew open--revealing a cheerful man in a stocking cap who turned out
to be a member of the St. Moritz rescue squad. (Hence the "Rescue 117" in this
article's title; "117" is the equivalent of "911" in Swizerland.)

We were rescued, but we weren't exactly free. For the remaining 18 hours of our stay,
the hotel's desk staff were unfailingly polite but more reserved than they had been for
the previous week. They declined our offer to write a letter to the elevator company about
the defective or inadequate safety mechanism. We had the distinct impression that they
thought the accident was our fault, and it was a relief to check out the next day.

From our experience, we learned two lessons:

1) Stay away from elevator doors--especially in the small, simple elevators that are
common in Europe.

2) Look for elevators with toilet facilities, in case you get stuck between floors for
several hours.

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